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Yesterday was certainly blustery here. Out my office window, the leaden clouds draped the sky and blotted out the sun for the biggest part of the day. It's nice to see the daylight break through today and the forecast high is for the 50's. Gotta love that!Decided to catch up on a project yesterday that's long over due---and note, still not done---requiring lots of time and attention. Every year I put together a hard copy garden journal for my records. It starts early in the spring when I first begin buying/planting/building/sowing. From plant tags to blue prints to receipts, I save it all. I can't tell you how often its served as a clone of my own memory. Someone will ask me, "What's that plant called?", and if its something fairly obscure, I'm not likely to pull it from the depths of my middle-aged brain. So I sat down at the dining room table where I could really spread out the contents of the manila envelopes I'd collected and got busy.
I put my journal together in sections. I catalog all like things together, such as all perennial tags in one section for quick reference and that just happens to be what I was working on yesterday---perennials. Of course, I'm not likely to forget that the name of the coneflower in the above picture is Coconut Lime, which, by the way, just happens to be one of my favorite Echinaccea, but once its tag is secured in my hard copy journal, I also have a record of when it was planted. From Apricot Delight Yarrow to Veronica Fairytale and everything in between, I have a tag and it goes in my journal.
We were busy last season, especially with building all the new perennial beds but, until I sat down to put the journal in order, I guess I didn't realize how busy 
I was at planting. I have 101 different perennial tags alone. Considering the fact that I rarely buy just one of anything, the plants that went into the ground last season numbered in the hundreds. Wow! Of course I planted several variations of the same family. For instance, this tiny beauty at the right is Beaujolais Bonnets, Scabiosa Atropurpurea, (don't you love how the name Beaujolais Bonnets rolls off the tongue?!?) but I also planted its cousins, Pink Mist, Butterfly Blue, and Vivid Violet---all with their own distinct botanical names as well. There's no way I'm going to remember all that information and searching through books or online garden sites for that info is just too time consuming. My hard copy journal is a godsend. I alphabetize all the tags and its a snap to find what I'm looking for in a hurry.
I did manage to finish the perennial section yesterday afternoon. Now its on to rhizomes. I did manage to sort those tags and again I was amazed. According to the number I collected, I planted 32 different varieties of iris---7 pinks alone! And without going into the diningroom and conferring with the tags, I can't remember a name of a single one.
Beginner's tip: Other information that can be added to a hard copy journal is where in the garden a selection was planted, how it faired and grew, likes and dislikes, etc. It's time consuming but I think its worth it. Later in years, you'll have an entire index in the volumes of handwritten journals that could come in very handy if one was to say, sell their property and pass that info on to a new owner.
